The Last of the Neo-Cons
Ian Buruma
NEW YORK – With George W. Bush’s presidency about to end, what will happen to the neo-conservatives? Rarely in the history of American politics has a small number of bookish intellectuals had so much influence on foreign policy as the neo-cons had under Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney, neither of whom are noted for their deep intellectual interests. Most presidents hope to attach some special meaning to their time in office. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, gave neo-con intellectuals the chance to lend their brand of revolutionary idealism to the Bush/Cheney enterprise.
Writing for such journals as The Weekly Standard , and using the pulpits of think tanks, such as the American Enterprise Institute, neo-cons offered an intellectual boost to the invasion of Iraq. The logic of the American mission to spread freedom around the globe – rooted, it was argued, in US history since the Founding Fathers – demanded nothing less. Objections from European and Asian allies were brushed away as old-fashioned, unimaginative, cowardly reactions to the dawn of a new age of worldwide democracy, enforced by unassailable US military power.
The neo-cons will not be missed by many. They made their last stand in the presidential election campaign of John McCain, whose foreign policy advisers included some prominent members of the fraternity (most were men). None, so far, seem to have found much favor in the ranks of Barack Obama’s consultants.
Such clout as the neo-cons wielded under Bush is unusual in the political culture of the US, which is noted for its skepticism toward intellectual experiments. A certain degree of philistinism in politics is not a bad thing. Intellectuals, usually powerless themselves outside the rarified preserves of think tanks and universities, are sometimes too easily attracted to powerful leaders, in the hope that such leaders might actually carry out their ideas.
But wise leaders are necessarily pragmatic, because messy reality demands compromise and accommodation. Only zealots want ideas to be pushed to their logical extremes. The combination of powerful leaders with authoritarian bent and intellectual idealists often results in bad policies.
This is what happened when Bush and Cheney took up the ideas promoted by the neo-cons. Both had previously been pragmatic men. Bush first ran for office as a cautious conservative, prepared to be moderate at home and humble abroad. Cheney was better known as a ruthless bureaucratic operator than a man of bold ideas. But he was obsessed with the notion of expanding the executive powers of the president. The combustible mix of autocratic ambition and misguided idealism took hold soon after the terrorist attacks in September 2001.
Even if, by some miracle, Iraq were to evolve into a stable, harmonious, liberal democratic state, the price already paid in (mostly Iraqi) blood and (mostly American) treasure is already too high to justify the kind of revolutionary military intervention promoted by the neo-cons. Another casualty of neo-conservative hubris might be the idea of spreading democracy itself. The very word “democracy,” when voiced by US government spokesmen, has become tainted by neo-imperialist connotations.
Similar things have happened before, of course. The idealism of Japanese intellectuals in the 1930’s and early 1940’s was partly responsible for Japan’s catastrophic war to “liberate” Asia from Western imperialism. The ideal of pan-Asian solidarity in a common struggle for independence was not a bad one; in fact, it was commendable. But the idea that it could be enforced by the Imperial Japanese Army running amok through China and Southeast Asia was disastrous.
Socialism, too, was a brave and necessary corrective to the social inequalities that emerged from laissez-faire capitalism. Watered down by the compromises without which liberal democracies cannot thrive, socialism did a great deal of good in Western Europe. But attempts to implement socialist or communist ideals through force ended in oppression and mass murder. This is why many Central and Eastern Europeans now view even social democracy with suspicion. Even as Barack Obama is worshipped in Western Europe, many Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians think he is some kind of socialist.
The neo-cons, despite their name, were not really conservatives at all. They were radical opponents of the pragmatic approach to foreign strongmen espoused by people who called themselves “realists.” Even though the arch-realist Henry Kissinger endorsed the war in Iraq, his brand of realpolitik was the primary target of neo-con intellectuals. They believed that aggressive promotion of democracy abroad was not only moral, and in the American tradition, but in the national interest as well.
There is a core of truth in this assertion. Liberals, too, can agree that Islamist terrorism, for instance, is linked to the lack of democracy in the Middle East. Realism, in the sense of balancing power by appeasing dictators, has its limits. Democracy must be encouraged, wherever possible, by the most powerful democracy on earth.
But revolutionary wars are not the most effective way to do this. What is needed is to find a less belligerent, more liberal way to promote democracy, stressing international cooperation instead of blunt military force. Obama is unlikely to repeat the mistakes of the neo-cons. But, in order to succeed, he will have to save some of their ideals from the ruins of their disastrous policies.
Ian Buruma is Professor of human rights at Bard College. His most recent book is Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2008.
www.project-syndicate.org
You might also like to read more from Ian Buruma or return to our home page.
|
|
wse99 08:23 16 Dec 08
It remains very fashionable to still cast George Bush’s Iraq intervention – yes, driven partly by the Neo-con push to sow liberal democracy in the ashes of the Baathist dictatorship, in the “national interest” - as “disastrous”. Very few serious commentators dissent. But has the self congratulatory fixation with George the simpleton and “the ruins of his disastrous policies” has perhaps blinded critics to a wider historical perspective.
I’ve lived long enough to see a number of foreign policy majority views crash on the rocks of history – especially the collapse of the Soviet Union – and I wonder is there another classic case coming in Iraq?
Yes there have been major errors of commission in the intervention in Iraq, and for a time the prognosis seemed bleak, but suddenly we have signs of progress. Yes, it might still all unravel, but maybe not. Most people, given the chance, prefer political systems offering some mix of freedom and peace and prosperity, however imperfect, to dictatorial political ideologies hallmarked by institutionalized thieving, oppression and bloodshed. So despite the obvious obstacles, especially the ethnic and religious fractures, maybe Iraq will hang in and succeed.
And the simple reality is that if Iraq does work, and is still working in 5, 10, 20 years, if it becomes say a Dubai writ large, powered by its huge oil reserves (likely much bigger than realized), then history’s take on George Bush et al will be very different from that of the riled indignant diehard opponents today.
Would history then judge the “price” being “too high”? I doubt it. Such an outcome would be truly historic and George Bush would get most of the credit. And as we well know historians relish unpicking inherited fashionable interpreatations. It’s what they live for.
Half a century ago we saw murderous depraved fascist regimes in Europe and Asia transform almost miraculously into prosperous democracies, sustained now for over half a century, and what a price was paid for this.
More recently Russia and China have moved a long way from the totalitarian dictatorships which once prevailed there. Again, what a price those countries paid to achieve this.
William Etheridge,
Rose Bay,
Sydney, Australia